CNN Midterm Forecast: GOP’s Best Position in 80 Years

CLAY: It’s getting bad out there for Democrats. When CNN — which all of a sudden has decided they want to go back to news. They’ve got a new leader, and the new leader is saying, “Hey, we may get rid of Jim Acosta. We may get rid of,” what’s our buddy’s name, “Brian Stelter.” All of the most anti-Trump, incredibly partisan CNN people are suddenly on the chopping block.

And there’s suddenly news that’s starting to break through on CNN. It feels like almost on a daily basis now there is a legitimate job being done by some members of the media at CNN to actually discuss what’s really going on. And big picture here, we are five months and a day away from the midterms.

Where do we sit at five months and a day? We are in, right now, a period in time when Joe Biden’s regime is starting to throw up Hail Marys, when the Democrats are starting to desperately try and score touchdowns without any basis behind them. That’s really what Thursday is. We’ll talk some more about Thursday, I’m sure, and react to it, for certain, on Friday, when the prime-time January 6 hearing occurs.

But here’s what the conversation was on CNN as, right now, as we speak, Republicans are in the best position they have been in the midterms in over 80 years, going all the way back, I believe, to 1938. Listen to CNN’s Harry Enten put this into context.

CLAY: That would be a monumental resetting of the House of Representatives. We don’t know exactly how it would break in the Senate, but if Republicans are winning that big it would be hard pressed, you would think, for Republicans not to also take the Senate. Buck, I was reading the Cook Political Report because I’m a nerd, and they said there’s basically 53 seats that are in any way winnable by one party or the other.

There’s 435 House seats; 53 of them, after redistricting — according to Cook Political Report — are actually up in the mix. What do you think is going to happen, and are you with me that we’re at Hail Mary time right now for Democrats where they’re trying to distract from baby formula shortages, from inflation, from gas prices to go over $5 a gallon for the first time in this country? Does it feel Hail Mary time to you?

BUCK: Absolutely. This is why… We’ll talk to you a little bit about the January 6 prime time whatever it is they’re planning in a couple of days. They’re bringing in a former, what is it? A Today show, one of those producers to make it really pop on the screen. It’s all theatrics. It’s literally theatrics. They’re just doing this to try to create spectacle to distract from exactly what you’re talking about.

And one of our duties here, I think, is always to make sure that we present at least the best argument that the other side has in any debate. What are they offering up? What are they saying? If you get into an argument with your neighbor Bob or Bill or whatever, over the grill or in the backyard, what’s he going to say as a Democrat, and what’s the argument going to be?

The Biden regime right now doesn’t have a compelling argument, period, full stop. All they have is what we’ve been seeing, which is misdirection, outright lying, distraction techniques with the January 6 “insurrection.” Can you imagine, by the way? Imagine what they’re really saying. And anyone who calls it an insurrection is lying to you or is not very smart.

That’s a baseline theory that I’ve had all along here. Mostly the people on CNN and others are lying about it, Clay. They know it’s not an insurrection. A bunch of unarmed people, mostly guilty of parading in a government building, can overthrow the United States government with its millions of employees, with its multi-trillion dollars of spending, with its 16 — or now 17, I guess — intelligence agencies with the most powerful military on the planet?

A bunch of grandmas taking selfies inside the Capitol is going to overthrow the government? People say, “What about the ones who attacked the cop?” Yeah, that’s bad. They should go to prison. But if you’re a leftist — and you just probably saw this, Clay — these two lawyers in Brooklyn from the 2020 George Floyd riots, Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman, were able to pull their plea deal. Federal prosecutors said, “Eh, that’s okay!” These are the ones who fire bombed a police car during the George Floyd riots.

CLAY: Molotov cocktail, right?

BUCK: Molotov cocktail. People say, “It’s not a weapon of war.” Actually, it is. It’s from the Winter War when the Fins were fighting the Soviets, and Molotov was a Soviet foreign minister, and the Molotov cocktail was used to throw at Russian or Soviet armor. They were able to pull their previous plea deal, Clay — this is quite a sweetheart situation — and plead to lesser charge. They said, “Yeah, we’re guilty; we’ll take the plea deal.” Now that people aren’t paying attention it’s, “We’ll take a plea to a lesser charge.” I bring it up because you have people for nonviolent crimes in solitary confinement for a year for January 6.

CLAY: Yeah, still.

BUCK: Still. And we see all this and you say, “What’s really going on in this country right now. What are the people in charge doing to reinforce your faith in the government? What’s the media doing to make any of us believe that the Democrat corporate media has even a hint of ethics?” And the answer is they’ve got nothing, Clay. They’ve got nothing.

CLAY: Yeah, I think you’re right. And this is why I wanted to play this cut, too, because I saw it and I said this is so transparent what they are trying to do. The January 6 hearing, which is going to take place on Thursday — and as we told you the timing on this is really bad, in that most people aren’t paying attention. But also, the next morning they’re going to get the latest inflation numbers. So whatever legs you thought were going to exist from your January 6 big public hearing, in prime time, the next morning you are going to find out how bad things are as it relates to inflation. And, by the way, I don’t think inflation will have come down very much.

And certainly, everybody out there driving around right now listening to us, looking at the different gas prices as they’re driving down the road, as they tick closer and closer to $5 a gallon is not feeling that way. But here’s NBC’s, one of their commentators, saying they need to make everyone focus on the January 6 investigation and ignore gas prices and baby formula shortages.

I don’t know. That doesn’t seem like a very easy thing to get Americans to shift their notice on. Are you going to pay attention to something that happened 18 months ago that has no impact on your life right now, or are you going to pay attention to the fact you can’t find baby formula to feed your baby and gas prices are at an all-time high, just about to go over $5. This is the Jedi mind trick that Democrats are trying to. Listen.

CLAY: This is not going to work, Buck. This is one of the all-time ridiculous arguments to make. Whatever your political leanings are, the price of gas impacts you way more right now than anything that happened on January 6.

BUCK: These emotional-impact issues that they’re talking about — whether it’s January 6 or Roe v. Wade, the focus on gun control right now — that’s just not going to get it done in any contested election, at least in my opinion, and also on the Roe v. Wade issue, what we’ve already seen is it didn’t move the needle. It basically stayed constant even when the Supreme Court, we believe, showed its hand that Roe is likely to be overturned — and that’s going to happen within a matter of a few weeks. That decision will come down.

You’re also hearing cries or calls for gun control at a time when you’re going to see the Supreme Court, I believe, slap down New York City’s absurd and unconstitutional gun-licensing regime. So that’s going to take the wind out of the sails there a little bit. And, Clay, my hesitation with all this is just, you’ll remember this and probably give me a play by play if I asked you for it, because I used to watch the NFL.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: There was a Giant-49ers game, maybe a decade ago, where the Giants were up so much, and you thought it was over, and you just watched for two quarters as they were systematically dismantled and lost. I think it was one of the biggest leads lost in a playoff game of all time.

CLAY: Yes. That’s where you feel like we are right now.

BUCK: I don’t want to be complacent. You said 53 seats are up.

CLAY: That’s what the Politico report said are viable can swing one direction or the other, basically 90%, or 88%, or whatever it is, of the seats are already Republican or Democrat, pretty solidly.

BUCK: We should set a GOP target for this midterm election, anything less than 50 seats is unacceptable.

CLAY: I think that is, in my opinion, a wildly optimistic number.

BUCK: Of course it is.

CLAY: Only for this reason —

BUCK: What am I going to say?

CLAY: Only for this reason, because everyone forgets that the Republicans had a pretty good run in 2020. Right? And so they won back a decent number of seats that they would have won back in a landslide election. I would set the over/under at 30. That’s where I would put the number right now.

BUCK: I say we target 50 and maybe we don’t all have to do push-ups in the gymnasium after practice, if it’s 30/40.

CLAY: By the way, are you surprised…? Because I am a little bit a little bit. I know guns have become the new focus, but it was only a couple weeks ago, Buck, where we were saying, “Hey, they’re showing up at all these Supreme Court justice homes. They were going to protest.” It feels like that totally vanished, didn’t it?

BUCK: For the Supreme Court, first of all, it was illegal, and it became increasingly problematic for Democrats who are legal experts to go on TV and act like we can’t read. This is the thing. No offense to the lawyer here, this is the thing some lawyers do where they act like we’re all bound by laws and can’t read the statute and understand ourselves a little bit sometimes.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We’re not talking about patent law here. We’re talking about you cannot be outside of a judge’s home to intimidate them. I think they realized that the base — or, rather, the activists during all this stuff — were starting to look pretty crazy and that what was going on in a midterm election was bad.

CLAY: You’re alienating suburban women by protesting suburban homes.

BUCK: Democrats are hoping to make a huge base turnout obviously — this is true in California and New York, et cetera, and Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, anywhere where they think it’s competitive elections, Georgia, you’ll have Democrats all of the sudden the night before the election saying, “I’m a moderate, gun-toting, love-America Democrat.” All of a sudden, they’ll change the tone in those races and places and hope the national party isn’t a drag on them.

CLAY: I just think it’s amazing how quickly that has died. You asked the question: What do you believe that Democrats are going to run on? I think it’s going to be abortion and guns. I think that’s the only thing they can run on.

BUCK: Neither of those moves the needle. If they do that, by the way, I think we could win over 40 seats, legitimately.

CLAY: I don’t disagree with you. But I don’t know what else they can run on. They can’t run on inflation. They can’t run on stock market. They can run on the border or crime.

BUCK: They used to tell me in the CIA, don’t overestimate or underestimate your opponents. Maybe they don’t have anything. They’re going to try this January 6 thing and they’re just going to cry a lot while we’re having our party after the election in Nashville.

CLAY: I think January 6 is way less effective than even abortion or guns would be. I think it’s going to be an abortion/guns race, that that’s what they’re going to try to turn into an issue. Which means if there’s any kind of gun legislation that comes out that there could be some big political move where — it wouldn’t shock me, it’s just a little bit of a prediction — that Democrats decide they’re not willing to take whatever small measure of changes to the laws they might get and argue politically that they need to leave it to the will of the American voter in the midterms. Just tossing that out there, because honestly, I think it’s going to be an absolute destruction, and I don’t know what else they can argue.